In the above-cited U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/841,017, a method and system for acquiring and transforming existing content (e.g., Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) content) for display and execution on multiple platforms and architectures were disclosed. In one embodiment, capture templates were created to harvest content from disparate content sources on multiple platforms. Data was then extracted from the disparate content sources using the created capture templates and a standardized data stream was generated from the extracted data. The standardized data stream was ultimately provided for display on one or more different type of platforms, such as a television set. These processes were enabled through the use of a syndication server more fully described in the '017 application.
For those readers not familiar with the '017 applications, syndication is a process of gathering information from a range of sources and repackaging the information for access and display at a destination. Syndication is popular with interactive television (iTV) environments, in which a viewer can interact with a broadcast or service being provided on the TV. The '017 application described in detail how to syndicate many types of content, and in particular HTML content, for such iTV applications.
HTML is not, however, the only form of content accessible to Internet users. Another popular form of content is news data, often formatted according to the so-called network news transport protocol (NNTP). In the past, NNTP data was received directly from a news-(NNTP-) based source and presented to the user directly through Java Server Pages/Servlets. Manipulation of data into a preferred display format was implemented on a page-by-page basis through hand coding.
Because multiple person teams (as opposed to just individuals) typically create software applications, this structure for obtaining NNTP data in preferred formats increases the possibility for inserting individualized (non-standard) coding techniques and duplication of code. This leads to issues with product supportability, scalability and maintainability. In addition, individualized application architectures make various processing tasks, such as error handling, much more difficult as new error handling processes would need to be implemented across each application instantiation.
Thus,                a. Prior approaches that address the gathering and provision of news content consist of custom-written programs or scripts to integrate news feeds from outside news (NNTP) sources.        b. These approaches use one program or script for each page to acquire and convert the content and assets and require programmer-level knowledge to perform the conversions.        c. These prior approaches are not designed to be a holistic system—rather, they provide a problem solution on a page-by-page basis.        